M (GFF)
M (GFF)
- Released
- 13 Sep 2026
- Runtime
- 111 min
The verdict
There are not yet enough audience votes to give this a reliable score. It is not currently playing in Hong Kong cinemas. 111 minutes.
What it is about
Berlin, 1931. A city gripped by fear: a child murderer is at large, and the police are closing in — but so is the criminal underworld, whose trade is disrupted by the relentless manhunt. When Hans Beckert is finally cornered, he faces not a court of law but a kangaroo trial in a basement, forced to plead for his life before the very men society has condemned. Fritz Lang's debut sound film remains a masterwork of moral complexity. Drawing on the real-life case of Peter Kürten, Lang wields silence, shadow and Edvard Grieg's haunting leitmotif to ask an unsettling question: who has the right to judge?
What to expect
Fritz Lang's first sound movie screens in a restored print as part of the German Film Festival. Set in 1931 Berlin, the story pits both the police and the city's criminals against a child murderer — the underworld because the heightened police presence is bad for business. What follows is less a whodunit than a queasy procedural that ends not in a courtroom but in a basement, where the captured Hans Beckert faces a kangaroo court of gangsters. Lang leans on silence and shadow more than dialogue, and threads Edvard Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' through the movie as Beckert's whistled calling card. The result is a thriller that spends its 111 minutes asking who is entitled to pass judgment, and whether a mob is any different from the man it condemns. The movie is in German with English subtitles only. No IMAX or 3D — the restoration is the draw.
Crew
- Director Fritz Lang
Common questions
- How long is the movie?
- 111 minutes.
- What language is it in, and are there subtitles?
- German dialogue, with English subtitles only.
- Is it suitable for children?
- The movie centres on a child murderer and sustains a dark, tense tone throughout. Older teens and up.
- Is this showing in IMAX or 3D?
- No — it is a restored 1931 movie screening in standard format.